Pages

Thursday, 30 October 2014

Passive Aggressive Agenda War

So Frack has this agenda thing that I'm supposed to look at every day. I am no stranger to the agenda. The agenda has been the bane of my existence since Frick was in 1st grade 7 years ago. I know what is expected with the agenda.

I use it to communicate with the teacher and the teacher uses it to communicate with me. I look at it every day. Usually the deal with the agenda is that if the teacher sends me a note I initial it or if I send her a note she initials it and then we know that the other person has read and acknowledged the note. Pretty simple, right?

This year is turning out to be a little different.

About a month ago I began to notice that every once in a while the teacher would put a circle on a calendar day that had already passed and had nothing written on it. Beside the big circle was the word "sign" written in cursive. I was like, WTF? What does she want me to sign? There's nothing there. And then I'd sign it feeling kind of like an idiot.

Then last week I noticed that she had circled every single day that I had not signed the page (because there was nothing written there to acknowledge) each circle accompanied by the word "sign" and suddenly realized, "Oh, she wants me to sign this thing every day. No matter what."

You see it was her complete lack of ever asking me to do this combined with her inconsistent yet passive aggressive circles that had confused me.

My first thought was, "Oh, I better get to signing this stupid thing every day then."

But my second, less mature, thought was, "But what if I don't? She can't make me. Why should I have to sign it every day if she doesn't have to write a note in it every day?"

I can be pretty immature sometimes.

Ordinarily I would do whatever little thing that would please the teacher just to please her. Over the years I have signed all the forms in triplicate and then signed new ones just for the hell of it. I have donated countless boxes of Kleenex. I have gone out to the store to buy the specific food bank item I was asked for (after they turned down the many food items I already had in my pantry....why not take it all? Sheesh.) I have done just about every little weirdly unreasonable thing that has been asked of me but I WILL NOT DO THIS.

Mostly because I just don't want to and there's no good reason for it and there are no bad consequences if I don't and because I do not take well to bullshit passive aggression.

And so I have decided to take this petty little stand about the silliness of acknowledging a blank page with my signature after I've shown myself to be communicative and responsive . It's a stupid thing to do, I know, but I also don't care. Because if it really means that much to her a simple and direct communication about her expectations (like an adult) would have done so much more for her than this silly, passive aggressive circle making.

Because when it comes to passive aggression, I can passive aggressive circles around your passive aggressive circles.